Saturday, March 31, 2007

What do you see as *the* most important impediment or problem for online socializing?

Sources



Porter, E. (2004). A Typology of Virtual Communities: A Multi-Disciplinary Foundation for Future Research. JCMC, 10 (1), Article 3, November. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue1/porter.html


Summary:


This paper is a survey of virtual communities.   Provided are a definition and the purposes  of virtual communities. In this paper, a virtual community is defined as an aggregation of individuals or business partners who interact around a shared interest, where the interaction is at least partially supported and/or mediated by technology and guided by some protocols or norms. The authors hope this paper is seen as a tool for practitioners and useful for researchers seeking to develop an understanding of the virtual community phenomenon.  Identified are the purposes for virtual communities.  Individuals use virtual communities of transaction to buy, sell or learn more about products and services, discuss shared interests, develop social relations and to explore new identities. 



Interesting in this definition is the idea that fluid communities are important and relevant, sometimes face-to-face (or non-computer based ) interactions are integral in sustaining an online community.  Also this article points out the different relationships fostered by different types of communities and the possibility for the communities to overlap.  For example, a corporation, say Disney, may want a user to have a professional and commercial orientation by encouraging viewers in their ABC network to write in about shows they like and purchase branded material. They also benefit by promoting more social oriented communities, for example fan based meeting places for people who like certain characters on their shows, because it drives viewership and related sales.  The paper also discusses the attributes of all virtual communities: 1) Purpose, (2) Place, (3) Platform, (4) Population Interaction Structure, and (5) Profit Model.



Synthesis: Taking time to define the intent and attributes of your virtual community, and having a consistent benchmark for your definition is valuable for both researchers (for generalizability purposes) and practitioners (for profitability purposes).



Questions: What are the disadvantages to having hybrid virtual communities (communities which overlap in the purposes as defined by this paper)? 

Also, I’m not sure about the following statement from the article…” Indeed, every virtual community should have a “home” in the proposed typology (Hunt, 1991, p. 188), indicating that the typology is collectively exhaustive. The typology implies that (1) every virtual community can be categorized as member-initiated or organization-sponsored based on how it was established. Trying to categorize the communities associated within Napster related software is what made me ask the question.  You could talk and discuss songs, but who actually created the community?  Are the software engineers the creators since they saw a need to create ‘textability’ (I coined it) into the software or the users who initiated use of the feature?

Norris, P. (2004). The bridging and bonding role of online communities.  In Howard, P. N. , & Jones, S. (2004) Society Online: The Internet in Context (pp.21-40).  Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage Publications http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~pnorris/Acrobat/bridging%20and%20bonding.pdf



This book chapter takes views the role of virtual communities through a social capital lens. 

“Bridging social capital refers to social networks that bring together people of different sorts, and bonding social capital brings together people of a similar sort. This is an important distinction because the externalities of groups that are bridging are likely to be positive, while networks that are bonding (limited within particular social niches) are at greater risk of producing externalities that are negative. This conceptual distinction should be seen as a continuum rather than a dichotomy, since in practice many groups serve both bridging and bonding functions, but networks can be classified as falling closer to one end of this spectrum or the other… Many believe that one important way to overcome these limitations could lie through the transition from territorial communities of place towards online communities of identity. ”   This author surmises that online communities will indeed survive to polarize like minded individuals as the chapter we read last week, Group dynamics in cyberspace. The psychology of the Internet suggests. 


The Norris chapter hopes to explore how virtual communities can be used to bridge connections between different homogenous group and expose individuals to different ideas and systems they might otherwise not be privy to.  Norris goes on to review the results of a 2001 Pew Internet and American Life Survey which focused on “Communities and the Internet including multiple items monitoring Internet use, behavior and attitudes towards both online and local communities, along with the standard socio-demographic factors…” and concludes that while generational gaps were improved to some degree, evidence is still out to for determining whether gaps can be bridged between race and class groups. 


There were two questions raised from this reading I found extremely intriguing:



  • How do territorial and online communities overlap and interact?

  • What is the overall impact of dysfunctional online communities? (race/ethic supremacist groups)


Bryant, J.A., Sanders-Jackson, A., & Smallwood, A.M.K. (2006). IMing, Text Messaging, and Adolescent Social Networks. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 11(2),



Summary:


This article was looking at



  • whether adolescents are creating more, but weaker ties using socially interactive technologies (SIT)s,

  • to what extent adolescent SIT-facilitated networks overlap with friendship networks, and

  • whether SIT relationships are important for adolescents who have fewer offline peer ties.


Synthesis/QuestionsThe authors conclude that the adolescents in the study were not creating more ties using SITs, nor were they necessarily creating weaker SIT-based ties; that there was little overlap between SIT-facilitated and offline social networks; and that socially-isolated adolescents were less likely than other adolescents to use SITs.

Several questions arose while reading this article.



What was the demographic of the population being studied?  I just know they were 7th graders in a Midwestern college town.  Was it Gary, IN (Home to Indiana University Northwest), Chicago, Illinois, or is the backdrop city found where Washington University of St. Louis is?  I point this out because the 7th graders in this area are not the same as the ones in Des Moines, or even Cincinnati.  Neither is better or worse, but given issues with the digital divide that still exist in our country, the data may be different given the sampled population.  I could be wrong, but this was not my research.



The finding on socially-isolated teens was surprising after reading how socially isolated teens had gravitated to communities on the net in Shirley Turkle’s Life on the Net. What are the factors that make some isolated teens turn to the Net for solace, while others shun it? Also in this article ‘youth’ are lumped into one big category several times.  I find this problematic.  Though we are trying to generalize through research, the term youth is not reflective of a monolithic population.  I am unsure (Based on my limited research background) whether they did an adequate job defining whether ties were ‘weak’ or ‘strong’.  Some points that deepened the ambiguity are my knowledge of software.    Though most of the data used was self reported via a survey, some questions such as how many people are on your messenger list can be misleading, depending on the software used.  I have probably 500 people on one messenger list, because it adds people based on my email activity.   Also it was not clear to me whether the type of friend (made face-to-face or made via SIT) was possible to overlap based on the information provided by the article.  I would have liked to see appendices of the survey questions and protocol.



The point Fei raises about anonymity in her post, “Communities infected with anonymity will either collapse, or shift the anonymous to pseudo-anonymous, as in eBay, where you have a traceable identity behind an invented nickname”, is broached here as well.  According to Bryant (et. al), Text messages are perceived to be less anonymous than instant messages, as they are facilitated through mobile technology.  The authors conclude that the attributes of a text message may be perceived as a gift (You have to obtain the phone number or name to send the text message) which means you have a more textured (forgive the pun) relationship than you do with someone who have met via a SIT.   This article may be outdated, however, some instant messenger services allow you to integrate your mobile text messaging with their service which leaves anonymity intact (i.e Skype phone number forwarded to my mobile phone... I can send and receive text messages using yahoo messenger)…



Polarization has been mentioned in a few of our readings.  Tynes, (et, al.) in  Adolescence, race, and ethnicity on the Internet: A comparison of discourse in monitored vs. unmonitored chat rooms saw a different phenomenon in teen users not recorded in adults.   When placed into a chat room based on age (13-17), youth talked quite freely  about race in several context.   Also, in both monitored vs. non-monitored situations, positive references to race outweighed negative references.  What was most hopeful were the implications from this study; “A major goal of this study was to determine whether Net-Generation culture is more accepting of diversity. We found that there were equal amounts of positive and neutral language surrounding issues of race in monitored and unmonitored chat rooms. The fact that this does not change in the presence of a monitor suggests that the Net generation can be more inclusive. Whereas when race is discussed or performed in adult online forums, it is often reported to be negative (Burkhalter, 1999; Nakamura, 2002; Kang, 2000; Glaser et al., 2002), adolescent discussions, for the most part, were positive in nature.


What do you see as *the* most important impediment or problem for online socializing?

I found my colleague, Anny comments about gaming interesting. “ As a female, I'm immediately out of the majority of gamers. And I'll probably stay there (although I do have female friends who are avid WoWers). The only game I've every played aside from a few rounds of PacMan in the 80s is Runescape, which I'm trying out for this class.”  Given her stated research interest I am led to paraphrase comedian Steve Harvey, “Something’s got to be wrong in game design.”  I am reading her statement as she feels excluded by nature of being a woman.  The gaming market is not designed for her.  So I see the issue in design.  Therefore, to address the question of the most important problem for online socializing and by extension, online gaming, is the development of the narrative.  By narrative I mean, the ongoing story throughout the game play or the storyline that gives context and environment.  The intrinsic motivation to initiate play, get to the next phase or progress in a game (my definition).



According to  Manfred Jahn in  Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative (http://www.uni-koeln.de/~ame02/pppn.htm#N2), Practically all theories of narrative distinguish between WHAT is narrated (the 'story') and HOW it is narrated (the 'discourse'). Some theorists, among them Gérard Genette, opt for a narrow meaning of the term 'narrative', restricting narratives to verbally narrated texts (Genette 1988 [1983]: 17); others (Barthes 1975 [1966], Chatman 1990, Bal 1985) argue that anything that tells a story, in whatever genre, constitutes a narrative. It is this latter view which is adopted here (see N2.2 for a fuller diagram of narrative text types). Here, then, are our first and most basic definitions:



  • narrative Anything that tells or presents a story, be it by text, picture, performance, or a combination of these. Hence novels, plays, films, comic strips, etc., are narratives.

  • story A sequence of events involving characters. 'Events' include both natural and nonnatural happenings (such as floods and car accidents). Characters get involved by being agents (causing an event), victims (patients), or beneficiaries (being affected by an event). Linguists further make a distinction between verbs which signal willful ('volitional') acts (What does X do? -- jump from a bridge, watch a show) and verbs which signal nonvolitional acts or experiences (What does X experience? -- falling from a bridge, seeing an accident).


When I was a student at Indiana University in Bloomington, Brenda “technodiva” Laurel met with students from the new media section of the telecommunication department and described how the narrative was one of the keys to establishing motivation specific to the target audience.  Futurelab: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/viewpoint/art56.htm  states “In the early 1990s Laurel proposed a system for generating well-formed plots as defined by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in his Poetics. In this system the computer program takes the role of the author. Consequently as the game progresses, any action by the player must be reflected in the system. In this respect the system begins to adapt to the player, increasing the possibility of making an interactive, fictitious world that is co-created by the computer and the player. The interactive dramatic paradigm advocated by Laurel has been leading the design of most videogames.”  



Don Norman also spoke that year (it was a good year) and discussed ideas from his book, The Design of Everyday Things”.  The HCI guru spoke to designing interfaces so that the user interacts more with the task and less with the interface, a topic we have discussed in this class in the past. Surmount to all of this is that the task be one that the user care about completing or community be something the user have some valid investment being a part of it.  So we are back to intrinsic motivation.  Online socializing communities have narratives as well.  Last week I revealed to you (key dramatic music) I am an avid soap opera fan. (Music fades). I have attended mini conventions and I participate in online communities.    For example, given the genre, we accept these ‘truths’ about the narrative of the community to be self-evident, and are thus not open for no more than mocking attack in online discussion:



  • Death is not permanent

  • Everyone has an identical look-a-like

  • Rich people don’t have security systems nor do they lock their doors

  • Children age quickly

  • Adults age slowly

  • Designer clothes are not an option, but part of our universal needs

  • Etc… etc… etc…


There are intrinsic motivations (hopefully established and or enforced by the narrative) that lead each of us to participate in the online discussions and continue to be fans and or participants of the community.  The American soap opera has been around for more than 70 years.   It has served a family tie from generation to generation,( I watched them with my grandmother).  They serve as a way of escape; how can I feel bad when Tina is being held in a well, with a broken leg by her evil twin sister and her family hasn’t noticed.   I admit, while this may be intriguing ir entertaining to me, you may find it ludicrous.   The problem is discovering the motivations for an intended user as Michael Lee also points out in his blog, “The study of player type and their motivations seems to differentiate people asking them why they like salad”.  As the Porter article discussed, taking time to define the intent and attributes of your virtual community is valuable.  It helps also figure out what narratives could be buy-ins for potential users for your community.  I think that it is useful to realize that there can be multiple narratives within one community, with a very fluid overarching central narrative. Perhaps this would yield results that would make a game that is intrisicly motivating to play for all of both Anny and me.



Discussion questions:



  • Does a universal narrative take away from the quality of a user’s experience?

  • How many narratives can be intertwined in one virtual environment?

  • Can multiple narratives help lessen polarization found in virtual communities?


 

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